


Lazily, Side by Side

by FreeTheSoul



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 10:32:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17527115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreeTheSoul/pseuds/FreeTheSoul
Summary: It’s been nearly three years since the whole ordeal of medusae and snakes was wrapped up. In that time, Shintaro had not gotten his act together but, after a push from his family, did end up roping Takane into renting a place with him.That was a year ago - and now it’s Takane’s birthday, and he has to figure out how to tackle that, too.





	Lazily, Side by Side

**Author's Note:**

> Just some good old-fashioned platonic ShinTaka being idiots together, I suppose.

The kitchen of Shintaro and Takane’s slightly-trashy, slightly-drafty, very-cheap apartment is, at present, filled with two things: The smell of eggs burning, and the sound of bickering.

It’s a familiar sight, and a kind of rhythm that they’d fallen into after only a few weeks of sharing the place. After over a year, this chaos has become the most regular part of one of their Sunday mornings.

While Shintaro stands apron-clad in front of the oven, a half-broken second-hand purchase, she’s sitting at their cramped little table while they both exchange teasing snipes from across the room. 

As an excuse to ignore Takane’s latest comment on his current outfit, Shintaro prods the miserable slice of bacon in the pan and winces at the hot grease that shoots out at his arm. He knows the apron he’s wearing makes him look ridiculous, but Haruka gave it to him as a gift once and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t get  _ some  _ mileage out of it. Too stubborn to give in to Takane’s teasing about it, wearing it in front of her has become his own personal form of petty defiance.

Tired of mocking him for it, Takane sighs, dramatically, and pushes the eggs on her plate around with her fork. She makes an expression of mild disgust at the grease that’s pooling underneath them, and Shintaro watches out of the corner of his eye as she almost takes a bite, then puts it back down.

“Why,” she starts, an expression of utter hopelessness on her face, “do we live together?”

He can’t help but think she’s being awfully over the top about the whole thing. “Because you’re too cheap to live alone.”

“Mm,” Takane takes a moment to consider this. “True. Good point. Still, this food is definitely a crime. How hard is it for you to learn how to cook? Man,  _ why _ do you choose Western food if you can’t make it?”

Shintaro taps his spatula against the edge of the pan, dodging the question. “I don’t see  _ you  _ making us breakfast.”

She stands up, her chair making an uncomfortable grating sound against the floor. “Also true. I’m getting takeout.”

This is enough to make Shintaro actually turn and talk directly to her instead of just mumbling at the stove. “At ten in the morning?”

“They’re open, aren’t they?” He gives her a blank, unimpressed stare. “Hey! Don’t judge  _ me  _ after I watched you eat pre-cooked garbage for two years straight. At least I eat vegetables.”

“Instant noodles with the little bits in them doesn’t count as ‘eating vegetables’,” he sighs. “We’ve been through this.”

She whips around, walking backwards as she snipes back: “They  _ do _ count! You can’t change facts!”

Her last word is muffled by the sound of the door to her room closing behind her, and Shintaro just turns back to the half-cooked mess in the pan. He prods it with the spatula, then flips off the element and scrapes it onto Takane’s abandoned plate. Bringing it with him around to the table she was just at, he doesn’t bother untying the apron before he sits down.

Shintaro’s breakfast is eaten in a sad kind of silence, his only entertainment his Twitter feed on his phone while he watches Takane lament about her roommate. Regretfully, after tasting the food himself, he doesn’t have it in himself to say she’s even wrong.

After cleaning up - which is to say, dumping everything in the sink - he balls the apron up and tosses it back into the cabinet. Takane is still closed up in her room without sign of ordering the takeout she’d promised, so while he digs out a change of clean clothing he makes the mental note to get her something to eat later.

He takes a shower, steaming up the bathroom in the process, and then quietly holes up in his room to spend an hour mindlessly browsing the internet.

It’s past noon by the time Shintaro is out of his room again, and he quickly locates Takane sitting in their living room tapping her phone mindlessly. She has her back to him, and he can tell by her damp and ratty hair that she took a shower at some point.

He coughs to get her attention. “Hey, uh…”

Takane doesn’t bother turning around to reply, busy with some game. “What?”

He bites his tongue, shifting his weight awkwardly from foot to foot while he tries to settle on what to say. After a few seconds, this gets on Takane’s nerves.

“Oh, come on, out with it. If it’s about breakfast, then…” She pauses, closing her phone and leaning her head over the couch to make upside-down eye contact. “Ugh,  _ fine.  _ Sorry I was mean. The eggs weren’t that bad, promise.”

Sighing, Shintaro dismisses her. “Oh, shut up. They were,” then: “Are you busy today?”

“What?” She repeats blankly, then guffaws and turns around excitedly to grip the back of the couch. “Wait, no way, are you asking me out on a date? Ew!” 

This garners a physical recoil from Shintaro. “No! Never!” She ignores him, falling back onto the couch while she barks laughter. “Shut up! Not that. Listen!”

Peeping open an eye, she arches an eyebrow and puts on her most sincere voice. He’d almost buy it, if it weren’t for that annoying look on her face. “Yes,  _ mister _ romantic?”

“Takane!” He draws out the sound of her name to a whine. “What, you really think we’ve lived together for,” he pauses to think, “over a year, and  _ now  _ I’m putting the moves on you? As if  you’re even  my type, anyways.”

“Right, I’m way out of your league,” she snorts, waving a hand dismissively and turning her attention back to her phone while she leans off the back of the couch. “Alright, so it’s not a date. Whadd’ya want?”

“I--” He realizes that he hadn’t really planned this conversation very well. “I dunno, isn’t it just nice to get out every once in a while? Especially before it’s, like, summer, when we won’t be leaving much…”

Immediately, Shintaro is struck by regret for saying that out loud. Takane’s expression doesn’t betray anything, but she glosses over the comment with a forced edge of sarcasm to her voice.

“What,  _ you’re  _ saying it’s nice to get outside? You’re not Kano, right? You’re the real, bona fide NEET that I live with? Yeesh,” she adds under her breath.

He doesn’t take the bait. “Look, we need to get something to eat, anyways. Takeout for breakfast sucks, and we already did it once this week.” When she doesn’t budge, he adds hurriedly: “I’ll even pay for it!”

She immediately snaps to attention. “Whoa, really? Man, I don’t know  _ who  _ you are, but you’re one hell of an improvement over regular Shintaro,” she mutters. “Alright, I’m game. Lemme brush my hair.”

A few minutes later, they’re outside their apartment complex and squinting into the midday sun. Takane walks just behind Shintaro while he follows the Google Maps directions on his phone on the way to the cafe he’d, apparently, already chosen without asking for her input. It’s close enough to their apartment that it doesn’t take them long to find it, despite Shintaro’s poor navigation skills.

As Shintaro shoves his phone into his pocket and announces that they’ve arrived, Takane takes a moment to stand outside and look at the place. It looks like a fairly standard cafe, if decorated a bit too cutely for her tastes.

“Shintaro,” she blurts out before he can walk in.

He turns around to stare at her, vaguely confused. “Yeah?”

“This is a normal place, right?” When he doesn’t seem to understand, she sighs. “It’s not like that maid cafe you brought me to last time? That was embarrassing. And stupid.”

“W-What? No!” He startles. “Of course not! I told you, that was an accident--”

“Mm,” she hums, ignoring him, “okay. You better be telling the truth. I  _ watched  _ you ogle that girl.”

Shintaro stares at her back as she brushes past him to enter the cafe, and then grimaces and mutters a “so did you,” under his breath as he follows in behind.

It does turn out to be a remarkably normal place, and Takane breathes a sigh of relief as a regular-looking waitress appears to bring them to their table. She browses the menu briefly before settling on strawberry crepes - if Shintaro is going to be the one paying, she may as well get something pricier than usual. For his part, he orders pancakes with excessively sweet toppings, which almost puts Takane off of her appetite just from seeing it in front of her.

“So,” Shintaro starts, after fidgeting in silence until their food arrived. “You, um. Do you know what day it is?”

Takane gives him a glare for interrupting her first bite, then squints at the question. “Sunday?”

“No-- I mean, yes, but that’s not what I, uh, meant.” He flounders. “Anything else?”

She stares at him.

“Today,” he leads. “Your… birthday?”

Takane makes a small ‘o’ with her mouth. “Oh. Yeah. Sure is,” she replies before moving on to finally dig into her food.

From the look on Shintaro’s face, he seems almost scandalized by her disinterest. “You--” he tries to point at her, but accidentally knocks his hand into a water glass and nearly spills it over the table. “You didn’t forget it, right?”

Takane shoves more food into her mouth. “Yeah, sure.”

Shintaro doesn’t have a reply ready for this, and simply stares bug-eyed at her until she notices.

“What?” She pauses, fork half-raised as she gives Shintaro a shocked look. It quickly morphs into a playful sneer. “Wait, did you actually think I forgot my birthday? Jeez! Of course I knew it was my birthday. I just didn’t think _you_ did.”

Shintaro frowns, tone adamant. “I wouldn’t--”

“You did last year,” she interrupts with a rather patronizing edge. “Actually, I don’t think you even knew when my birthday  _ was  _ until you saw it on my online profiles.”

He can’t deny either of her statements, and Shintaro feels rather helpless as he watches her cram the forkful of crepe into her mouth and guffaw at him. Sulking, he steals one of the strawberries off of her plate and receives a quick swat on his wrist in return.

A moment passes, and Takane sets down her cutlery neatly on the side of her plate and stares at him directly. There’s an odd expression on her face, unnerving him so deeply that he snaps to attention.

“Well,” she starts after a thoughtful pause. Here, she gives him a smile, and it’s one of her rare genuine ones. “Even if you usually forget... Doing this-- It means a lot to me, y’know? Thanks.”

“Uh,” Shintaro replies intelligently.

She raises an unimpressed eyebrow at his response, but continues smoothly. “One thing, though, you can do next year to make it better.”

Knowing her, the request is probably going to be something unrealistic involving a heavy dose of public humiliation. Shintaro rubs the back of his neck and looks up at her from under his bangs. “Yeah?”

Takane leans an elbow on the table and slumps her chin down on her hand. She stares at him, expression serious and intimidating for a long second before it cracks into a grin. “Get better at cooking, so we can have these at home instead of trying to give me food poisoning.”

He falters, for a second, at how simple it is - and then he smiles back. “Sure, I can do that.”

Takane gives a satisfied nod and picks her cutlery up again, cutting herself a bite of his pancakes.

“Oh, and since you said you’re paying, I’m racking up the bill at a mall later to make up for last year. Thanks!”

**Author's Note:**

> I find it rude when strangers comment criticism (constructive or not) unprompted, so please don't! I write fics for my own entertainment.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
